History of France eBook

12. The Papacy at Avignon.—­Clement
had never quitted France, but had gone through the
ceremonies of his installation at Lyons; and Philip,
fearing that in Italy he would avoid carrying out the
scheme for the ruin of the Templars, had him conducted
to Avignon, a city of the Empire which belonged to
the Angevin King of Naples, as Count of Provence, and
there for eighty years the Papal court remained.
As they were thus settled close to the French frontier,
the Popes became almost vassals of France; and this
added greatly to the power and renown of the French
kings. How real their hold on the Papacy was,
was shown in the ruin of the Templars. The order
was now abandoned by the Pope, and its knights were
invited in large numbers to Paris, under pretence of
arranging a crusade. Having been thus entrapped,
they were accused of horrible and monstrous crimes,
and torture elicited a few supposed confessions.
They were then tried by the Inquisition, and the greater
number were put to death by fire, the Grand Master
last of all, while their lands were seized by the
king. They seem to have been really a fierce,
arrogant, and oppressive set of men, or else there
must have been some endeavour to save them, belonging,
as most of them did, to noble French families.
The “Pest of France,” as Dante calls Philip
the Fair, was now the most formidable prince in Europe.
He contrived to annex to his dominions the city of
Lyons, hitherto an imperial city under its archbishop.
Philip died in 1314; and his three sons—­Louis
X., Philip V., and Charles IV.,—­were
as cruel and harsh as himself, but without his talent,
and brought the crown and people to disgrace and misery.
Each reigned a few years and then died, leaving only
daughters, and the question arose whether the inheritance
should go to females. When Louis X. died, in
1316, his brother Philip, after waiting for the birth
of a posthumous child who only lived a few days, took
the crown, and the Parliament then declared that the
law of the old Salian Franks had been against the
inheritance of women. By this newly discovered
Salic law, Charles IV., the third brother, reigned
on Philip’s death; but the kingdom of Navarre
having accrued to the family through their grandmother,
and not being subject to the Salic law, went to the
eldest daughter of Louis X., Jane, wife of the Count
of Evreux.

CHAPTER II.

THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR.

1. Wars of Edward III.—­By the Salic
law, as the lawyers called it, the crown was given,
on the death of Charles IV., to Philip, Count of
Valois, son to a brother of Philip IV., but it
was claimed by Edward III. of England as son of the
daughter of Philip IV. Edward contented himself,
however, with the mere assertion of his pretensions,
until Philip exasperated him by attacks on the borders
of Guienne, which the French kings had long been coveting
to complete their possession of the south, and by